Designing Hybrid Gifts

Hybrid gifting combines physical artefacts and experiences with digital interactivity to generate new kinds of gifts. Our review details how gifting is a complex social phenomenon and how digital gifting is less engaging than physical gifting for both givers and receivers. Employing a Research Through Design approach, we developed a portfolio of four hybrid gifting experiences: an augmented advent calendar; edible music tracks; personalised museum tours; and a narrated city walk. Our reflection addresses three concepts: hybrid wrapping where physical gifts become wrapped in digital media and vice versa; the importance of effortful interactions that are visible and pleasurable; and the need to consider social obligation, including opportunities for acknowledgement and reciprocation, dealing with embarrassment, and recognising the distinction between giving and sharing. Our concepts provide guidance to practitioners who wish to design future gifting experiences while helping HCI researchers engage with the concept of gifting in a nuanced way

Hashtag Holocaust: Negotiating Memory in the Age of Social Media

This study examines the representation of Holocaust memory through photographs on the social media platforms of Flickr and Instagram. It looks at how visitors – armed with digital cameras and smartphones – depicted their experiences at the former concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Neuengamme. The study’s arguments are twofold: firstly, social media posts about visits to former concentration camps are a form of Holocaust memory, and secondly, social media allows people from all backgrounds the opportunity to share their memories online. Holocaust memory on social media introduces a new, digital kind of memory called “filtered memory.” This study demonstrates that social media was a form of memory. The photo-based platforms of Flickr and Instagram helped better visualize it: the photographs on these sites were literally and figuratively “filtered.” Users had the ability to select a black and white filter, or ones that lightened or darkened the photographs. Digital cameras and smartphones allowed users to take as many photos as they liked and upload the photo(s) they wished. Figuratively speaking, people chose to present certain parts of their visits on social media platforms. They filtered their experiences and chose the part of their story they wanted to tell. Building from the varied fields of memory studies, history of the Holocaust, visual culture, dark tourism, and public history, this study demonstrates that social media is a digital archive that historians must consider when writing about historical memory in the twenty-first century

The New Pulpit: Museums, Authority, and the Cultural Reproduction of Young-Earth Creationism

Since the mid-twentieth century there has been increasing concern among evangelical Christians over the depiction of human origins in American education. For young-Earth creationists, it has been a priority to replace scientific information which contradicts the six-day origin story reported in Genesis 1 with evidence they claim scientifically reinforces their narrative. As this has failed in public education, creationists have switched tactics, moving from “teach creationism” to “teach the controversy”. The struggle over evolution education in the classroom is well-documented, but less attention has been paid to how young-Earth creationists push their agenda in informal educational venues such as museums. Given the authoritative nature of museums and the ubiquity of these institutions in American life, museums have become targets for the creation message. This project was undertaken to critically analyze the use of the museum form as an authoritative source which facilitates the cultural reproduction of young-Earth creationism. I propose a tripartite model of authority and museums is the best way to understand the relationship between young-Earth creationism and American museums, with the creation, contestation, and subversion of authority all acting as critical components of the bid for cultural reproduction. Assessing the utility of this model requires visiting both creation museums alongside mainstream natural history, science, and anthropology museums. Drawing from staff interviews, survey data, museum visits, and the collection of creation-based literature for secular museums, these sources combine to create a comprehensive picture of the relationship between young-Earth creationism and museums in the United States today

The Visitor Experience: Reimagining the 21st Century Visitor

This thesis explores a challenge that living history museums currently face of being tied to a specific time and place but needing to attract and interact with changing 21st century visitors. One way that museums combat this challenge is through an engaging visitor experience. To explore this issue, Old Sturbridge Village is used as a case study. It is a living history museum, depicting the 1830s, that is located in central Massachusetts. OSV was founded in 1946. The research is coupled with literature on museum visitor experiences. This mixed methods study utilizes interviews of employees at the museum, participant observation of meetings, and content analysis of social media pages, signage, and magazines/brochures. Through these methods, the balancing act that museums undertake is examined. Finally, recommendations for continued engagement with 21st century visitors are made

South to South: Connections in the Ordinary, Fostering Empathy by Encouraging Travel through Design

South 2 South: Connections in the Ordinary, explores similarities between South Korea and Alabama through a designed sensory experience that allows users to engage in cross-cultural information in an inviting and familiar way with the use of recognizable motifs in order to reduce fear, foster empathy, and encourage travel. The creation of South 2 South was informed by research on travel fears, empathy, and transnational relations between the two regions. South 2 South helps facilitate the beginnings of these interactions by presenting new cultural information directly to the more insular communities of northeast Alabama. My hope is that South 2 South can be used as a guide to help to connect other cultures in a similar fashion through use of familiar forms and atmospheres in order to help other communities similar to that of northeast Alabama engage in transnational relations

Robo-ethics design approach for cultural heritage: Case study - Robotics for museum purpose

The thesis shows the study behind the design process and the realization of the robotic solution for museum purposes called Virgil. The research started with the literature review on museums management and the critic analysis of signi cant digital experiences in the museum eld. Then, it continues analyzing the museum and its relation with the territory and the cultural heritage. From this preliminary analysis stage, signi cant issue related to museum management analysis comes out: nowadays many museum areas are not accessible to visitors because of issues related to security or architectural barriers. Make explorable these areas is one of the important topics in the cultural debate related to the visiting experience. This rst stage gave the knowledge to develop the outlines which brought to the realization of an ef cient service design then realized following robot ethical design values. One of the pillars of the robot ethical design is the necessity to involve all the stakeholders in the early project phases, for this reason, the second stage of the research was the study of the empathic relations between museum and visitors. In this phase, facilitator factors of this relation are de ned and transformed into guidelines for the product system performances. To perform this stage, it has been necessary create a relation between all the stakeholders of the project, which are: Politecnico di Torino, Tim (Telecom Italia Mobile) JOL CRAB research laboratory and Terre dei Savoia which is the association in charge of the Racconiggi’s Castle, the context scenario of the research. The third stage of the research, provided the realization of a prototype of the robot, in this stage telepresence robot piloted the Museum Guide it is used to show, in real time, the inaccessible areas of the museum enriched with multimedia contents. This stage concludes with the nal test user, from the test session feedback analysis, many of people want to drive themselves the robot. To give an answer to user feedback an interactive game has been developed. The game is based both on the robot ability to be driven by the visitors and also on the capacity of the robot to be used as a platform for the digital telling. To be effective, the whole experience it has been designed and tested with the support of high school students, which are one of the categories less interested in the traditional museum visit. This experience wants to demonstrate that the conscious and ethical use of the robotic device is effectively competitive, in term of performances, with the other solutions of digital visit: because it allows a more interactive digital experience in addition to the satisfaction of the physical visit at the museum

Collaboration and Creativity: A case study of how design thinking created a cultural cluster in Dublin

Tourism is a rapidly expanding industry with a wide range of economic benefits. Expenditure by tourists visiting Ireland was estimated to be €4bn in 2012, a 4.4% increase on 2011, adding to tourism expenditure by Irish residents of €1.4bn. Tourism accounts for 4% of national GDP and 6% of all employment in Ireland. Following the economic collapse in Ireland post 2007, the national tourism agency (Fáilte Ireland) has had to dramatically alter its role from being a funder for tourism infrastructure to being a catalyst for and facilitator of collaborative R&D and innovation . This paper explores a case study of one such innovation initiative: a collaborative innovation experiment that brought together over 30 of Ireland’s most significant cultural institutions (including the National Gallery of Ireland, National Library of Ireland, Museum of Natural History) and commercial bodies to use a design thinking process to develop Merrion Square as a new, more integrated cultural tourism destination. Merrion Square is a 'cluster' or geographic concentration of cultural organisations that, in this case, cooperated to focus on delivering new and better cultural experiences for visitors. The group drew on ethnographic research; involved customers, tour operators, historians, local community activists and artists, and used them to develop a portfolio of novel ideas for individual and joint implementation. The outcome has been the launch of a series of successful new visitor experiences and the development of a far higher level of cooperation between the institutions. 85% of the institutions involved report increased visitor numbers as a consequence of the project – with some specific events reporting an attendance rate up over 42% on the prior year. Such events are now synchronised through a management company comprised of the member institutions. This paper makes a valuable contribution by outlining the role of design-thinking in collaborative, multisectoral tourism service design and by spotlighting the role of trends research